J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

With the page turned horizontally, the swiftly rendered main sketch is a study of numerous moored sailing barges, likely on the River Rhine at Cologne, the subject of numerous studies on preceding pages. Folio 151 recto opposite (D19138) includes an unidentified riverside view and profiles of the distant Siebengebirge (Seven Hills), as seen from the city.

The other page is the last in the main run showing Cologne (see under folio 141 recto; D19118). At the top right here is a small landscape sketch with distant buildings, helpfully labelled ‘Aix’, as Finberg noted,1 for Aix-la-Chapelle (now usually referred to in its German form, Aachen).Turner’s next stop, about forty miles overland to the west, where he made a handful of drawings in and around the city (see under folio 151 verso; D19139). He likely approached on the ‘most uninteresting, and not very good’ coach route through Julich,2 approaching from the north-east.

See this sketchbook’s Introduction for discussion of its many shipping studies.